When Wishes Come True
by Myrime
Summary: You were five when they captured you and twenty when you finally got free. You fought fifteen years, you didn't give up, no matter what happened. And in the end it was worth all the pain.
1. Captured

Ander's life in short glimpses. One for every year in the Circle.  
Please review (and tell me about mistakes I may have made)!

* * *

I. Captured

You are five when they come for you, four big men with heavy armors and swords at their sides. You hear their cold voices, shouting and telling you that there's no use in fighting against them. You see a little boy – your brother? – crying and trying to get to you. Someone holds him, someone with your face but eyes so lifeless you don't recognize them. She doesn't look at you, doesn't say a word. She doesn't move when you call out for her and she doesn't help you when the men carry you away. She barely nods and turns her back on you, going on with her life, not watching as you go, not even saying goodbye to the son she won't see ever again.

The next thing you remember is the Circle, your home and prison for so many years to come. Until then your life was all freedom and laughter and sunshine. Now there are walls and coldness and eyes that follow your every step. You are afraid but you smile and don't show it because you always were the big brother – and big brothers aren't afraid. Never.

But when the night falls you can't pretend to be strong anymore. Even with the light turned off you see the shadows of the templars, guarding the doors. They don't move, they don't say anything. You don't know their names and faces, but that doesn't matter because they know you. They do nothing but watching and waiting, always ready to fight a danger only they know.

In the darkness you admit you're afraid. And you don't even know what they're capable of, you can't fear them as they should be feared.

* * *

II. Living in a Cage

One day you turn six. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. You awake with a smile but it fades when you realize there won't be any surprise – no presents, no games, no party with all the neighbours coming and your mother baking the cake you always loved to eat. You wait the whole day for her, looking out of every window to see if a boat is coming over the lake. But nobody comes. You miss them, more than you ever thought possible. You miss your mother's voice telling you to wash your hands before supper and your brother's tantrums whenever he thought you cheated while playing with him. You even miss your baby sister's crying that kept you awake for days and weeks. You never knew what you had until you've lost it all.

You don't have any friends here. You're still the new one, the kid that breaks all rules, the troublemaker. You run in the hallways, you speak too loud in the library and you never listen to what the teachers are telling you. You were always free, so how are you supposed to know how to live in a cage?

You are seven when you try to escape for the first time. The moon is full and the stars are falling and your little heart aches for the feeling of grass under your feet and wind in your hair. You don't even make it out of the tower. They find you in the entrance hall, searching for a window without bars after you couldn't open the front door.

That night they beat you up for the first time – to make you learn respect. Later in bed you hold your aching stomach and the shame burns hotter than the tears on your wounded face. And the whole time the noise of the waves of the lake outside rings like laughter in your ears.

* * *

tbc


	2. Moonlight

III. Moonlight

You are seven when you try to escape for the first time. The moon is full and the stars are falling and your little heart aches for the feeling of grass under your feet and wind in your hair. You don't even make it out of the tower. They find you in the entrance hall, searching for a window without bars after you couldn't open the front door.

That night they beat you up for the first time – to make you learn respect. Later in bed you hold your aching stomach and the shame burns hotter than the tears on your wounded face. And the whole time the noise of the waves of the lake outside rings like laughter in your ears.

* * *

IV. To be Strong

For one year you don't show any emotions. You don't cry or laugh, you don't argue or fight. When you turn eight you start real lessons. You can decide which classes you want to take, but you don't get exited like anyone else. For one year you are defeated.

Life is easier that way. The other children ask you to learn with them. The teachers give you more advanced tasks. The templars don't look at you with a murderous glint in their eyes, every second ready to stop you from whatever you're doing.

You realize then that's exactly what they want you to be: a lifeless shell, always obeying their orders, never disagreeing, never wanting to decide on your own. Your first smile hurts the muscles you didn't use for so long. And it feels so good to run through the hallways, a wide grin on your lips.

You're back. And – seeing their angry faces – you swear to never let them defeat you again.

* * *

tbc


	3. Learning

V. Learning

With nine you're old enough to understand that you can't simply leave through the front door. So you start to watch. You study the templars as if they're just another class you have to attend. You learn which ones look more often away than others, which ones are just and which ones answer every wrong move with hits and punishments.

You get into trouble every other day – when you sneak through the hallways in search of a way out, when you provoke the guards just to see how they react. You lose most of the friends you got over the last year, but it doesn't matter. At least you wouldn't have to say goodbye to them when you're ready to leave.

* * *

VI. Nightmares

Two days after your tenth birthday you try to escape again. You know when there are no templars guarding the little door in the kitchen that leads into the small garden that seems like paradise to you. You melt the lock and the first step out of the tower is like a dream. It's spring but the night is warm and the flowers smell like a long forgotten time. Not once in the last five years did you see the sky without thick glass and a thousand rules separating it from you. Not once were you this free, just standing in that doorway, the whole world laying in front of you.

When you hear them behind you it is too late. You start running nonetheless, straight into the lake. The cold water is full of broken promises. It doesn't take them a minute to catch you, but it's enough to fill your heart with a new kind of longing.

They beat you up and lock you in a cell. There's no window and you hear nothing. Still you think the world's calling for you. After a week they let you out. Your voice is nothing more than a hoarse whisper and your hands are bleeding from all the scraping and hammering against walls that won't give you free. They laugh about your eyes that are filled with fear, still seeing the images that haunted you at night. And you know those nightmares won't go away, no matter how long you wait.

* * *

tbc


	4. Friends

VII. Friends

You are eleven when you get the first birthday present you can remember. You're sitting at a window watching the lake and the birds in the sky. You close your eyes, dreaming of sunlight on your skin and it's just like that that you can feel the warmth as if it was real. The low noise of someone purring makes you open your eyes – and it isn't the sun that keeps you warm. Instead there's a little cat curled against you and you just know he feels the same like you looking out of the window. You sit there for what feels like hours and when the bell rings you don't want to leave to go into your cold bed. When you go he follows you but with the first templar arriving in the hallway he's gone.

Later, when you lie in the darkness of the dorm you wonder where he came from. You never saw another animal in the tower. But you will never know, so you try to sleep but the sudden coldness that doesn't leave your body keeps you awake. So you notice his little paws searching for the right spot to sleep next to you in the middle of the night. You hear his purring and feel his warmth. He doesn't leave until the morning comes and the templars with their rules and watching eyes. He comes again the next night and the one after that. Suddenly it doesn't matter where he comes from or where he goes. He's there. With you. And you know you've just found your first friend.

* * *

VIII. Sneaking around

The next year is almost peaceful. You know you have to become stronger to fight off the templars, to survive outside the tower. Mr. Wiggums has to know a way out. He sometimes leaves for a day or a week and when he comes back he doesn't look with the same burning longing at the world behind the windows as you, at least for a while. Once he even brought a mouse and you're pretty sure it wasn't one of those they keep in the labs. You tried to follow him but he's always too fast and more often than not you're caught by the templars. Still those little adventures are more useful than your classes. You learn how to sneak through the shades, unnoticed and unseen, you learn how to get invisible and you get to know every hallway and every room in the tower. In your head you build yourself a detailed plan, knowing it will be useful when the right time comes.

And for once you try to stay in line. Then even if you're only twelve you know it's true what folk says. To get out of your prison, it isn't enough to know your enemy. You have to think like one.

* * *

tbc


	5. Family

VIII. Family

You are thirteen when your mother dies. You are called into Irving's office. He never talked to you when there wasn't any rule-breaking to discuss, so while you're thinking about your latest misbehaviours, the news catch you off-guard. There's a sadness in his eyes that makes you feel uncomfortable, but somehow so angry, too. He wouldn't have to tell you, if they hadn't taken you from your home. So when he asks you if you want to talk you shrug and answer 'About what?' with a false smile on your lips and run away.

At first you don't feel anything. You haven't seen your mother in seven years and you don't think the blood in your veins makes you a family. At least it didn't stop her from letting the templars taking you with them. But when the first tears fall you realize it hurts more than you thought possible. She may have given you away but in another life she may have loved you as you still love her. And somewhere, deep in your heart, you think – or hope – she regretted her decision in the end.

That night you swear to her that you'll never stop fighting and that you'll never give up, so that no child has to cry for a mother it doesn't know ever again.

* * *

IX. Never enough

At your fourteenth birthday you're alone. Alone in a dark cell with only your thoughts to distract you. You don't know how long they'll keep you here but it doesn't matter. Over the last months you tried to escape three times. Three nights with a hammering heart and cold fear flashing through your veins. Three times you leave the tower behind for some hours or days only to be brought back again and again. Three failed attempts to get free and three days of beatings you had to endure while your mind was spinning with thoughts of rage and revenge.

Though you got farther every time it was never enough. You know they can track you with your phylactery – they told you after the first time with a triumphant grin – but you thought it would be enough to always keep in motion, to never stay too long in one place. It wasn't. It is never.

Still you know you won't stop trying. You'll find a way once you're out of this hole. You have to. Because you can't bear this nightmare forever.

* * *

tbc


	6. Falling in Love

XI. Falling in Love

You are fifteen when you fall in love for the first time. You keep telling yourself that it's not love because that would mean you need her and the only thing you ever really wanted and needed was to be free and she has surrendered to the Circle and the templars. So you can't love her, right? Because she's everything you never want to become. But she's also intelligent and beautiful and perfect and your heart aches every time she's not with you, so how can you not love her?

One night, when the air smells like her and your lips are still hot and you're longing for another kiss, you ask her to run away with you. _'They will find us,'_ she whispers with eyes so sad it hurts to look into them. _'And they'll bring us back. And then everything will get worse.'_

You promise to keep her safe but you know you'll break your word, because in the tower no one's really safe. But then you kiss again and all those thoughts of fighting and freedom don't matter for a perfect moment of pure happiness.

* * *

XII. Goodbye

With sixteen you lose your best friend. He turns into an abomination and your world shatters anew. After all, that's what _you_ should be afraid of, right? With a bitter laugh you think of telling the templars they should kill all cats they could find because it seems they're as dangerous as all the little children they take away from their families. But you keep it to yourself because you have something to do you can't do with angry templars following your every move.

It's in the middle of the night when you stand at the lake right under the window where you first met Mr. Wiggums. They took him away – or that formless shape he turned into – after they slaughtered him, so you don't have anything to bury. In your hands you hold the blanket he always slept on. You burn it and throw the ashes into the water. You watch as the waves carry them out into the world you both loved so very much and for the moment it doesn't matter if someone could notice your tears.

You give your silent goodbye and turn into the shade. There's no need in waiting any longer. You'll go and they'll hunt you. It will always be like this. What matters is who'll win in the end.

* * *

tbc

Reviews would be so nice...


	7. No One Cares

XIII. No one cares

Of course they got you. You nearly reached Denerim but they found you and brought you back and locked you up in a cell deep under the tower for what feels like years. Actually it has been more than eleven months but time doesn't matter down here in the dark. You are seventeen and you think you are forgotten. No one cares for someone who breaks the law. No one cares for the boy who screams in his prison, who cries for his lost life and freedom, who hits the walls around him until his hands seem to never stop bleeding. No one cares for you.

You can't sleep because there are nightmares waiting for you to close your eyes. You can't stay awake either because the darkness is everything you fear. Your lungs seem to burst because they need fresh air they never get. Your body hurts due to the templars that come down here every once in a while. Your mind is filled with the unbearable longing for so much as a glimpse of the world outside. Your heart lies in pieces and you don't think it can ever be whole again. It's filled with the darkness of this place and you know it will follow you wherever you go. And you were never this close to giving up.

* * *

XIV. Blood

When you're eighteen that blood mage, Jowan, escapes the tower. They say he did it out of love, but while he's free that girl and his friend will most likely never see the sun again. But to you it doesn't matter why he did it, but how. You didn't know they store the apprentice's phylacteries right under your feet. You didn't know they could be found and destroyed so easily. Maybe, if you hadn't isolated yourself after you came back to the Circle, you could have found out about their plan. You could have talked them into taking you with them. You could have gone alone.

They may have installed alarms telling them about any intruder, but unlike the others you have learned how to stay unnoticed and how to avoid the templars. You could have destroyed your phylactery (and everyone else's too, just to show them they can be defeated too) and be gone in no time. You would have been on the run for the rest of your life but your chances would have been equal.

But it's too late. They've brought the phylacteries away, somewhere you can't reach them. That night you think of Jowan and the friends he betrayed and the fact that he'll die if they ever find him because he turned to blood magic. You think his freedom wasn't worth the prize they had to pay. But still you can't stop wondering what he feels now, with the templars not being able to track him down, free to go wherever he wants, finally able to do something good in the world. It has to be wonderful.

* * *

tbc


	8. Growing Up

Here we go for the last chapter. I'm planning a sequel, but I think it will take a while.  
Tell me what you think about it!

* * *

XV. Growing Up

You are nineteen when they take you to your Harrowing in the middle of the night. You never thought they would allow you to take it but somehow someone must have spoken for you. Obviously the templars don't agree with this decision and they make it clear the whole way to the Harrowing Chamber. They sneer and make rude commentaries. They push you hard into walls and laugh about their own jokes about how they'll enjoy killing you up there. But you do nothing to provoke them any further and you don't show your fear. You walk silent with your head held high and your back straight.

You know nothing about the Harrowing. Do they let you fight against the templars? No, that's what they want to prevent. Maybe they let them beat and provoke you to see how much you can endure and how long it takes until you snap and defend yourself? These aren't pleasant thoughts but reality is worse. You have to face your greatest fears and desires, you have to defeat and withstand them. All while they're watching you, waiting for the smallest sign of you losing the fight against yourself, the sword at your throat, ready to kill you without a moment's thought.

You are no stranger to the Fade. The teachers show you how to find your way out there but they never confront you with a demon willing to destroy your soul. The moment you close your eyes darkness embraces you. You feel fresh air and hear birds singing. Then there's your mother, her arms wide open and her face soft, like you've never seen it before. _'My darling,'_ she whispers with a voice so clear that your soul cries out. _'Come home, child. I should never have let you go.'_ There's one single perfect tear on her cheek and then she smiles and for one moment everything seems to be alright. _'Stay with me and you'll be free!'_ She reaches for your hand and her touch is feather-like. That's the moment you realize all this is a demon's work. Your mother's voice was never so lovely, but loud so all her children could hear her. Her hands were raw and scarred from a life's hard work and she wasn't one to be overly motherly. And she is dead.

You remember Irving telling you about her death and your tears. You remember Mr. Wiggums and how he turned into an abomination. Suddenly you're afraid you hesitated too long, that they're about to kill you because you didn't fight the demon from the very beginning. You take a deep breath and gather all the strength you have. When the demon erupts in a thousand with pieces of light you can't suppress a wide grin. Because now you know you can fight and win. No matter who'll stand against you, in the end you'll be victorious.

* * *

XVI. Free

When you're twenty hell breaks loose in the Circle. You noticed that the ever present tension increased and that every now and then students disappeared in groups of four or five, whispering and reading books that certainly weren't for their next lessons. The templars were clearly oblivious of the changes. And when they finally noticed it was too late. One day they come for you. You are amused as they tell you you're arrested for planning a riot. And when they lock you into the well known cell you sleep for the first time in a long while without nightmares, because even if you aren't part of the conspirators they just gave you the hope that this time the tower could fall. You know you have to be fast when the right time has come. As soon as the news of fighting mages will reach Greagoirs ears, he'll block all entrances to save at least the rest of Ferelden. So you wait and plan and the whole time you're excited like a little boy who gets presents on his long-awaited birthday. Everything you wish for is suddenly within reach. With bloodmages and abominations raging through the tower they won't have time to follow a single mage. And when the situation here calmed down they still have to go to Denerim to get your phylactery to track you down. Enough time for you to get as far away as possible from the templars.

One night you feel magic in the air, mighty and uninhibited. It calls for you but you block your mind. You have to concentrate on your task. It isn't long until the templar guarding your door notices too that there's something wrong. He leaves his post without a second's thought, ready to give his life for his duty. Idiot. You wait a minute that seems like eternity for you, then you open the door with a little ball of fire. Your senses are sharpened and the shades welcome you as an old friend as you sneak through the tower. You find your way through the hallways, unnoticed and unharmed, and it takes you no time to get out of these walls.

Some hours later you feel the morning sun on your face, there's wet grass under your feet and wind in your hair as you run. Suddenly you're five again, playing with your brother and the other kids on the fields near your village. You're laughing and it's the first true laugh in years, without fear, without bitterness. You close your eyes but you don't feel the well-known panic that usually comes with the darkness. Somehow you know they won't bring you back this time.

You don't know yet that nothing as wonderful as this moment can last, you don't know what sorrow you will have to face, what loss, you don't know that you will find yourself in another prison, one that you can never escape. But for now the future doesn't matter. For now, you got what you dreamed of for so long. For now, you are free.

* * *

The End


End file.
